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Eclipse vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Eclipse and Visual Studio Code are both popular Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) used by developers for coding, debugging, and building applications. Here are some of the key differences between Eclipse and Visual Studio Code:

  1. Language Support: Eclipse is mostly used for developing Java applications, but it also supports other programming languages like C++, Python, and PHP. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code supports a wider range of programming languages such as C++, Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and more.

  2. User Interface: Eclipse has a more complicated and cluttered user interface compared to Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code has a cleaner and more user-friendly interface that is easier to navigate.

  3. Plug-in and Extension Ecosystem: Eclipse has a vast number of plug-ins and extensions available for developers. However, Visual Studio Code has a larger and more active ecosystem of extensions and plug-ins that are constantly being updated.

  4. Debugging: Both Eclipse and Visual Studio Code have robust debugging capabilities. However, Visual Studio Code's debugging features are generally considered to be more user-friendly and easier to set up.

  5. Performance: Visual Studio Code is generally considered to be faster and more lightweight than Eclipse. This is because Eclipse is built on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and has a heavier memory footprint.

  6. Community Support: Eclipse has a large and active community of developers, but Visual Studio Code's community is even larger and more active. As a result, developers using Visual Studio Code have access to more resources.

In summary, Eclipse has a broad range of language support and is highly customizable, but can be resource-intensive and has a steeper learning curve. VS Code is lightweight, fast, and has an intuitive user interface with a large and growing extension ecosystem, but has fewer advanced features compared to Eclipse and limited support for legacy languages.

Advice on Eclipse and Visual Studio Code
christy craemer
Needs advice
on
EclipseEclipseIntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA
and
PyCharmPyCharm

UPDATE: Thanks for the great response. I am going to start with VSCode based on the open source and free version that will allow me to grow into other languages, but not cost me a license ..yet.

I have been working with software development for 12 years, but I am just beginning my journey to learn to code. I am starting with Python following the suggestion of some of my coworkers. They are split between Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA for IDEs that they use and PyCharm is new to me. Which IDE would you suggest for a beginner that will allow expansion to Java, JavaScript, and eventually AngularJS and possibly mobile applications?

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Replies (12)
Vlad Vetsh
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Pycharm is great for python development, but can feel sometimes slow and community version has Somme very annoying restrictions (like they disabled jupyter notebooks plugin and made it premium feature). I personally started looking into VS Code as an alternative, and it has some very good potential. I suggest you take it into account.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

The Community version of PyCharm is free and should give you what you need to get started with Python. Both PyCharm and IntelliJ are made by JetBrains. IntelliJ is initially focused on Java but you can get plugins for lots of other things. I subscribe to JetBrains' Toolbox: https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/ and have access to all of their great tools.

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Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Hi, I will give my opinion based on my experience. I have used PyCharm, both community and Professional version. The community has limited functions, like you can't use a Jupyter notebook whereas it's available in the Professional version. PyCharm is slower compared to Visual Studio Code. Also Visual Studio Code is an editor which supports various languages. I myself have used both Visual Studio Code and PyCharm. I feel Visual Studio Code would be better choice. You may as well decide based upon your requirements.

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Charles Nelson
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

I couldn't imagine using a development tool other than the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate All Products Pack. A single license allows me to work directly on my server running Ubuntu and/or my workstation running Windows 10 Pro simultaneously. My current project uses HTML, W3CSS, JavaScript, Java, Groovy, Grails, C, GO, Python, Flask, and Rust. For me it's worth every penny of the $150 license fee. And you can try it for free.

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Ivan Martinez Morales
Software Engineer Intern · | 4 upvotes · 689.6K views
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

I'd personally recommend Visual Studio Code as it gives you the flexibility of working in any language, so long as there are extensions to support it. It gives you the flexibility to learn Python, venture into Java, Javascript, and eventually AngularJS, and potentially mobile applications. It's also free and you can install it on your personal computer. I think Visual Studio Code would serve your intended use case best.

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awesomebanana2018
Recommends
on
Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code

Visual Studio code is easy to use, has a good UI, and a large community. Python works great with it, but unlike some other editors, it works with most languages either by default or by downloading a plugin. VS Code has built in linting, syntax coloring, autocompletes (IntelliSense), and an api for plugins to do there own tooling.

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Isaac Povey
Casual Software Engineer at Skedulo · | 3 upvotes · 689.7K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ really is the best for Java, I switched from eclipse years ago and never looked back. As for javascript, python and angular either using the standalone products from jetbrains (pycharm for python, webstorm for js) or installing the relevant plugins for InteliJ will be your best bet. Pycharm etc. are really just InteliJ with some additional plugins installed.

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Pranshu Verma
Engineer at Cisco Systems · | 3 upvotes · 689.7K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

If you starting with Python then PyCharm is better. For Java I would suggest to go with IntelliJ IDEA but people also prefer eclipse so I would say try both and then decide. For JS/Angular/React I would suggest go with VSCode. I personally use it and prefer as its light weight and have good integration with chrome for frontend development.

PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA are both products of JetBrains. They have a free (limited feature) and paid edition. Eclipse is free. VSCode is also free.

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

Pycharm is all you need to get start coding in python or any of its framework. Its an awesome tool you should give it a try :)

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Brian Turner
System Architect at Mary's Watch, Inc. · | 1 upvotes · 689.6K views
Recommends
on
IntelliJ IDEAIntelliJ IDEA

Easy to learn and everything you need

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Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

All three are great, however, I believe that IntelliJ IDEA's multiple IDE's are slightly more straight-forward and more up-to date than Eclipse. If I had to choose one specifically for Python projects I would go with PyCharm.

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Pritam Nandy
Engineering Manager at Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited · | 1 upvotes · 637.1K views
Recommends
on
PyCharmPyCharm

This is a very easy to use tool and gives you the opportunity to start coding right after the installation with almost everything setup automatically by the tool.

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Decisions about Eclipse and Visual Studio Code
Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 12 upvotes · 1.3M views

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

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Manabu Tokunaga
CEO, Co-Founder at WinguMD · | 10 upvotes · 522.5K views

I originally chose IntelliJ over Eclipse, as it was close enough to the look and feel of Visual Studio and we do go back and forth between the two. We really begin to love IntelliJ and their suite of IDEs so we are now using AppCode for the IOS development because the workflow is identical with the IntelliJ. IntelliJ is super complex and intimidating at first but it does afford a lot of nice utilities to get us produce clean code.

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Simon Ibssa
Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo · | 2 upvotes · 1.2M views

I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!

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Pros of Eclipse
Pros of Visual Studio Code
  • 131
    Does it all
  • 76
    Integrates with most of tools
  • 64
    Easy to use
  • 63
    Java IDE
  • 32
    Best Java IDE
  • 9
    Open source
  • 3
    Hard for newbews
  • 2
    Great gdb integration
  • 2
    Professional
  • 2
    Good Git client allowing direct stage area edit
  • 2
    True open source with huge contribution
  • 2
    Great code suggestions
  • 2
    Extensible
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 0
    Works with php
  • 340
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 308
    Fast
  • 193
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 158
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 142
    Very basic but free
  • 126
    Git integration
  • 106
    Intellisense
  • 78
    Faster than Atom
  • 53
    Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
  • 45
    Great Refactoring Tools
  • 44
    Good Plugins
  • 42
    Terminal
  • 38
    Superb markdown support
  • 36
    Open Source
  • 35
    Extensions
  • 26
    Awesome UI
  • 26
    Large & up-to-date extension community
  • 24
    Powerful and fast
  • 22
    Portable
  • 18
    Best code editor
  • 18
    Best editor
  • 17
    Easy to get started with
  • 15
    Lots of extensions
  • 15
    Good for begginers
  • 15
    Crossplatform
  • 15
    Built on Electron
  • 14
    Extensions for everything
  • 14
    Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
  • 14
    All Languages Support
  • 13
    Easy to use and learn
  • 12
    "fast, stable & easy to use"
  • 12
    Extensible
  • 11
    Ui design is great
  • 11
    Totally customizable
  • 11
    Git out of the box
  • 11
    Useful for begginer
  • 11
    Faster edit for slow computer
  • 10
    SSH support
  • 10
    Great community
  • 10
    Fast Startup
  • 9
    Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
  • 9
    Great language support
  • 9
    Powerful Debugger
  • 9
    It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
  • 8
    Can compile and run .py files
  • 8
    Python extension is fast
  • 7
    Features rich
  • 7
    Great document formater
  • 6
    He is not Michael
  • 6
    Extension Echosystem
  • 6
    She is not Rachel
  • 6
    Awesome multi cursor support
  • 5
    VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
  • 5
    Language server client
  • 5
    SFTP Workspace
  • 5
    Very proffesional
  • 5
    Easy azure
  • 4
    Has better support and more extentions for debugging
  • 4
    Supports lots of operating systems
  • 4
    Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
  • 4
    Virtualenv integration
  • 3
    Better autocompletes than Atom
  • 3
    Has more than enough languages for any developer
  • 3
    'batteries included'
  • 3
    More tools to integrate with vs
  • 3
    Emmet preinstalled
  • 2
    VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
  • 2
    CMake support with autocomplete
  • 2
    Microsoft
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 2
    Light
  • 2
    Big extension marketplace
  • 2
    Fast and ruby is built right in
  • 1
    File:///C:/Users/ydemi/Downloads/yuksel_demirkaya_webpa

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Cons of Eclipse
Cons of Visual Studio Code
  • 14
    2000 Design
  • 9
    Bad performance
  • 4
    Hard to use
  • 46
    Slow startup
  • 29
    Resource hog at times
  • 20
    Poor refactoring
  • 13
    Poor UI Designer
  • 11
    Weak Ui design tools
  • 10
    Poor autocomplete
  • 8
    Super Slow
  • 8
    Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
  • 8
    Microsoft sends telemetry data
  • 7
    Poor in PHP
  • 6
    It's MicroSoft
  • 3
    Poor in Python
  • 3
    No Built in Browser Preview
  • 3
    No color Intergrator
  • 3
    Very basic for java development and buggy at times
  • 3
    No built in live Preview
  • 3
    Electron
  • 2
    Bad Plugin Architecture
  • 2
    Powered by Electron
  • 1
    Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes
  • 1
    Slow C++ Language Server

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What is Eclipse?

Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.

What is Visual Studio Code?

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

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What companies use Visual Studio Code?
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What are some alternatives to Eclipse and Visual Studio Code?
Android Studio
Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. It provides new features and improvements over Eclipse ADT and will be the official Android IDE once it's ready.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
IntelliJ IDEA
Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.
NetBeans IDE
NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.
PyCharm
PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!
See all alternatives